


All the precious things

by Stonestrewn



Series: Dinner Time [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:28:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I want something to happen,” Skinner says. </p><p>“What sort of thing?”</p><p>“I want to get you off.”</p><p>“I think that would be lovely,” Dalish says, a sweetly kind of breathlessness making hitches in her voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the precious things

The others raise their mugs of morning ale to Skinner when she stumbles out of the linen closet where she and Dalish spent the night. She can tell what they’re thinking, it’s written all over Stitches' raised eyebrows, spelled out in the way Grim nods and Rocky grins and the Iron Bull sits like one giant congratulatory exclamation mark at the head of the table.

  
“Fuck you,” she says, voice gravelly. She’s drooping with fatigue, sagging under it like a canopy after heavy snowfall.

  
“Still got some left in you, huh? Damn!” Rocky haw-haws, and Skinner’s insides set on fury fast as tinder. She sweeps his bowl of porridge, plate of sausage, spoon and mug off the table. It all hits the floor with a crash.

  
“ _Fuck_ you!” she spits. “And you’re in _my_ seat,” which isn’t true, they don’t do seats, but Rocky throws his hands up and scoots several feet up-table until he’s pressed against Stitches' side, eyeing her warily.

  
Krem, who hasn’t blinked, fills a cup up with ale and slides it over to her.

“Our mistake,” he says.

“Sit down, Skinner,” the Iron Bull adds before she has a chance to snap in response, and his tone is final enough that she complies. “No need to ruin breakfast.”

He smiles in this winning way they both know can mellow her out, and she dives into her ale to escape it. It’s good to wash away the sleep-slimy saliva coating her mouth, anyhow. The taste wakes her up a little and seeing the splatter of porridge out of the corner of her eye is starting to bother her. It wasn’t really fair and it’s not really Rocky pissing her off, it’s this undefinable agitation churning in her belly since yesterday night.

“You have to admit, though,” the Iron Bull says. “You come out looking like that? Can’t blame anyone if he jumps to some conclusions.”

“Yeah, what did happen?” Rocky asks, having apparently retrieved his spine.

Skinner groans.

“She snores like a fucking druffalo.”

Krem, that handsome asshole, is the first to laugh.

\--

Dalish crawled into the closet with her last night, unprompted, as if it was the way they always packed up an evening.

The closet, because sometimes, times like these when they’re on the road and the road goes through woods that are too vast and fields that stretch too wide with too much horizon, Skinner needs to feel walls up close. All around her, pressing in and holding steady. She doesn’t have to fight the impulse because with the Chargers you get to cling to things and only get the kindest of mockery for it.

They’ve taken over a mid-tier mansion that stands abandoned in winter, broken up the locks and turned a few chairs into firewood. The sheets Skinner threw off the shelves to make a bed on the closet floor smelled like cold and lavender. She bundled up on them and Dalish bundled up around her and Skinner didn’t throw her out. Dalish’s arm was around her waist. Dalish’s thighs were up against her butt and she was breathing on her neck, into her collar.

Skinner sleeps with a dagger in hand, always. Dalish slept palms splayed, fingers spread over Skinner’s belly.

She didn’t throw Dalish out. She lay still, eyes open to the darkness, and waited for something to happen, for the touching to start.

Then Dalish started snoring, and then she didn’t sleep, and then it was morning and now it’s day and they’re back on the road and she is freezing and exhausted and miserable. She never elbowed Dalish awake, never yelled at her to shut up. Skinner draws in the snot in her nose with gurgle, spits the phlegm into the snow.

Miles to trudge before they fight, and already her body is as responsive and alert as a sack of turnips. She tries to resent Dalish for it and fails.

This is the first mission with just the Charger core, the inner circle, that also includes Dalish. They all like her. She fits.

And that’s a grand mystery, because look at her. Those gangly arms and that little silly pouty lipped smile and no one is ever going to believe she’s carrying a bow, especially not when the bow sets six people on fire at once. She talks in this ridiculous high-pitched languid way, calls people Ser without sarcasm and when she has to wear shoes she complains for hours.

And still she manages to belong. They opened ranks for her without really discussing it among themselves. The Iron Bull and Krem must have talked at some point, like they do, but that was all between just them. On the outside it was seamless and Skinner knows it’s her fault, that if she had wanted to prevent it she could have and the fact that she didn’t made it happen. It itches in her a little, like she should have. She had expected herself to. She hates the fancy prancy elves and their bullshit, has had enough tattooed faces looking down at her to earn the right to hate. Dalish, though. She may be fancy and she’s prancy as fuck, but she doesn’t do the bullshit part at all.

They’ve had conversations. Skinner has talked. Dalish has listened, and asked, and Skinner didn’t know she had that many words in her, that they could come tumbling out like that. About the potted flames between the roots of the Vhenadahl, the pictures telling stories on the alienage walls, paint on her fingers and sweets in her mouth on the night the year turns. All the precious things she keeps in her pockets brought out into the light. Dalish lines hers up beside them, red sails against blue sky and the stories under the stars, and she does it in a way that lets Skinner’s keep their luster.

Dalish walks with the Chargers now, sits among them and belongs. There’s this brightness, deep in her eyes and Skinner knows she would cut through full battalions to prevent it from ever getting snuffed out.

Last night she waited for the touching to start and her heart was hammering.

They reach the river inn by nightfall without catching sight of the militia men they’re ordered to kill. The Iron Bull and Krem confer briefly in the light of the lantern hanging over the inn door. “The Frisky Fennec” is a terrible name and the sign is unspeakable but Skinner is more than ready to become a paying customer. Her ears have gone numb from the cold.

“At least the snow will have slowed them down, too,” Krem says, but the creases on the Iron Bull’s forehead don’t smoothen.

“That’s assuming they were ever in the area,” he says. His nipples are a bit blueish.

“Ah, cheer up, chief. We’ll get them tomorrow.”

“But I wanted to hit something _today_.”

Krem looks up at the door frame.

“Not too late yet.”

“Hey, now.”

Dalish shudders suddenly, a violent full-body shake. Skinner kicks up snow, aiming the spray at Krem.

“Wrap up the flirting so we can go inside.”

“I think someone’s getting jealous,” the Iron Bull says with a grin and steps aside. Skinner ushers in Dalish before going in herself and she catches him winking at her as she does. She pretends not to notice.

They eat. They drink. They divide the two beds and five blankets between them: Rocky sleeping on the chief’s broad chest, the other three men bundled up together. Skinner folds herself into a cupboard and Dalish curls up with her, wordlessly snuggles close and holds her tight, and with the snoring and the racket in her heart, Skinner doesn’t sleep a wink.

\--

The next day is as uneventfully tedious as the one before. They walk through snow, more snow, snow and snow and fucking snow, and the chief’s expression gets darker as the hours pass. At this rate they won’t get paid and if there’s anything the Iron Bull hates more than missing out on a fight it’s missing out on money. He and Krem bicker incessantly, compulsively, aiming venomless darts at each other to keep the monotony and frustration at bay.

Skinner feels about as well as a slug in salt. She got a couple of fitful hours of sleep last night, but that was it and the lack of it is getting to her. She can’t keep the chill at bay at all, it sneaks under her layers and burrows into her skin. Clouds hang low and bulging grey over the treetops and when the snow starts falling Skinner can’t even get worked up about it. The day’s gotten more miserable? How unexpected.

Dalish comes up beside her.

“You look frozen solid, you poor thing,” she says. She unties one of the many shawls tied around her torso and drapes it over Skinner’s head like a hood, wrapping it snug around her neck and minding the ears. “Any better?”

They’ve fallen into step without even trying. Dalish is a good bit taller and when she puts an arm around Skinner's shoulders she fits underneath like a knife in its sheath. She looks at her, still waiting for an answer, so Skinner shrugs and she squeezes her a little, pleased. The shawl smells like her and her hip bumps into Skinner on occasion, into her arm hanging useless and still and not squeezing back anywhere.

It’s getting dark. The snow is blowing into Skinner’s face. Dalish keeps her arm around her until they’re back at the inn with no fight found and at bedtime it’s around her waist again. Skinner’s shitty arms, her useless shitty arms, they are still and she is still. She is still and awake and her heart, her shitty, shitty heart, it is screaming.

\--

It’s like when she slips into Orlesian mid-conversation by accident, the seconds before she realizes why the other person stares so blankly. For a few moments her brain refuses to reshape around her second language and she’s stuck in a place where she can’t remember how talking used to work.

Dalish’s breath on her neck in the night is like that. Forgetting how the fuck you make a word.

“We’re moving on,” the Iron Bull says after breakfast. “Clearly the targets aren’t around, or we’d have found them by now.”

“Where to?” Krem says. He takes payment much more lightly than the captain, but disappointment over missing out on it altogether is visible in the lines around his mouth. This job would have set them up for months.

“Back to the city. I’ll do a little negotiating with our contractor, see where it gets us.”

“It’s a plan,” Krem says, but neither of them look hopeful.

The Iron Bull mutters about bad information and lazy nobles who can’t be assed to give proper directives while they pack up and get going.

“You think cold compensation could become a thing?” Stitches asks as they step into the washed-out morning light, pulling his scarf up over his face. Grim grunts glumly and they both sigh.

Skinner’s head is aching. Three nights without any sleep to speak of and she’s not handling it well. She would never admit it but she’s relieved they’re going back. Her body isn’t responding like it should, it’s a sluggish, sodden burden. Tracing Krem’s steps instead of tramping up her own path, she sticks her hands into her armpits and thinks only about moving one feet in front of the other.

She wants to be angry at Dalish, very angry, for the paralyzing uncertainty her careless intimacy has slammed into her life, for making her this bewildered thing of a woman, but she’s too tired to fuel the flame. She kicks up snow and regrets the effort.

The alarmed yell from behind her takes a second too long to register through the haze of exhaustion and when she’s yanked back with a sharp tug on her belt, Skinner is entirely unprepared for it, tumbling into the snow.

The arrow misses her by a hair’s breadth.

Skinner is on the ground, snow in her mouth; the others are springing into action. The Iron Bull roars, equal parts triumph and rage. His Chargers ride that sound like a wave, crashing into the militia men with a rush of violence storming in their blood. Someone hauls her on her feet - Stitches, giving her the quick battlefield once-over for injuries - and she has an arrow drawn as soon as she’s standing upright, but the fight is moving on without her. She throws herself into the fray with a curse, she’s owed some necks after the past few days, but only one of her arrows hit its mark before it’s all over.

The Bull’s Chargers have successfully completed another job and can start counting the coin that’s to come. Skinner spits into the snow.

\--

“Resolve it,” the captain says an hour later.

The throats have been cut, the bodies looted and Dalish has used a so called “old elven camping trick” to get a good fire going with only a few soggy sticks on hand. Skinner sits huddled on top of a fallen tree trunk, not joining in on the meal of hardbread and dried meat. After the fighting frenzy dissipated she feels even worse. There’s the beginning of nausea roiling in her gut.

The Iron Bull sits down beside her.

“I need you to be better than this,” he says. There is still blood on his hands. On him, somehow, it looks friendly.

Skinner just shrugs in response. He peers down at her, tilting his horns in an angle of concern.

“That’s all the attitude I’m getting? Come on, Skins, you’re not even spitting at me.”

She growls half-heartedly and he shakes his head.

“Just ask her to sleep with you. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

And that’s the thing, right? It doesn’t. It usually isn’t. It wasn’t with the rest of them - but then, with them there were bodies first and the rest, whatever the individual emotion settled on, came later. This here with Dalish is not the proper order of things.

Skinner doesn’t like thinking of herself as a woman with something to lose, even now that she has six potential losses always at her side.

She turns her head to glare at him.

“Is that an order?” she snaps, and he laughs.

“There she is. That’s my angry elf.” He thumps her on the back a couple times - the impact is massive but she knows, appreciates, just how much he’s holding back. “Good job staying alive out there today.”

“You too, captain.”

They nod to each other in unison.

\--

Come evening, she asks Stitches for a stamina potion. 

In a hushed aside, because they’re not supposed to waste these outside of battle. Both Krem and the Iron Bull are sticklers about it but their healer is a pal who asks no questions and keeps his smirks to himself. The mixture zaps her head into clarity, puts a fizz of artificial energy in her limbs. She drains the vial to the very last drop. 

She tries to pretend she was planning on tonight long before the captain and the talk, but it's no use. Are you a hapless little girl-baby who needs mommy to lift her over the doorstep, Skinner? she mocks herself and finds she must admit that sometimes, maybe, yes.

But come night time, in the same closet of the same mansion where they slept on the way out, she rolls around to face Dalish, or at least the impenetrable darkness where she assumes Dalish’s face to be, and over her heart-hammering, she says:

“You snore.”

“Sorry.” Dalish sounds sheepish, subdued. “Would you like for me to leave?”

“If I did, you’d know.”

Dalish's arm is around her waist. It rests only lightly, a suggestion of tension in the way its full weight won’t land. Funny how she never noticed before.

“I want something to happen,” Skinner says.

“What sort of thing?”

“I want to get you off.”

“I think that would be lovely,” Dalish says, a sweetly kind of breathlessness making hitches in her voice.

“Oh, yeah?” Skinner inches closer, presses her hips flush against Dalish’s. “You could’ve told me that. We could’ve started doing this ages ago.”

“You have wanted to?”

“Obviously.”

“I’m so glad to hear it.”

“Could’ve _told_ me.”

“In the clan, I wasn’t a hunter, you know. I am so much better at being pursued.”

“You’re a piece of shit.”

“Yes,” Dalish agrees. “Please, kiss me.”

So Skinner does. In the dark, she doesn’t catch her mouth on the first try, gets the smooth, dry skin of her cheek instead and it’s a few seconds of their chins bumping until, finally, there. There are her lips, chapped but pliant. There is her tongue, a little sour but perfect against Skinner’s.

“You’re such a tease,” Skinner says as she comes up for air. “You liked that you could throw me off like that, didn’t you? Seeing me all wound up over you. You liked that.”

“Honestly, Skinner, I only-” Dalish starts, word breaking into a gasp when Skinner nips at her earlobe. “ _Oh_. Oh, I like _that_.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to reward you for it,” and she shifts their position so that she’s on top. Dalish puts her hands on her shoulders, lifts her head to meet the kiss halfway when Skinner closes in again.

“Really, I only wanted to be close.” She smells so good. Sweat and smoke and ale and leather, yeah, and it’s good. It mingles with the faint lavender from the linen and the way it comes together, the dainty scent of flowers and that of being on the road, it’s so her. “I thought, we could move in slow and perhaps end up in a nice place, eventually.”

“I don’t do slow.”

“Apparently not!”

Skinner pulls away a little. She wishes she could see Dalish properly, get a read on her.

“Are you okay with this? We can stop.”

“I will be perfectly fine, as long as we do _not_ ,” Dalish says. She sounds happy, delighted. She traces Skinner’s jaw with a finger. “You are so sweet.”

Skinner erupts into an incredulous burst of laughter. She’s been accused of many things, but never that.

“Don’t you laugh at me!” Dalish is indignant now, though you can hear her smile. “I find you very sweet. Well, sometimes.” She strokes Skinner’s cheek, runs her thumb along the curve of an eyebrow, a gentle, awed touch. “I think perhaps I was nervous of you, a little bit. This, I might have forgotten how it’s done. I was alone so long before I met you all. The captain and the Chargers and especially you, Skinner.”

“Okay,” Skinner says, because what the fuck, she doesn’t have words prepared to answer something like that. Her insides are unfolding, and her heart, her shitty heart, it is all jubilation. “Let’s get me into your pants now.”

“Splendid idea!”

But she starts higher up, combs her fingers through Dalish’s hair while she kisses her deep. An experimental tug at the strands wrenches a heady moan out of the other woman, so Skinner tugs again, and again, and Dalish writhes beneath her. She nibbles at her ear, from tip to lobe, runs her tongue along her neck and laps at the spot where her pulse flutters like a small frantic insect trapped under the skin.

Skinner kneads Dalish’s breasts through layers of clothing, but when she diverts attention from her neck to blindly fumble with straps and buttons to get them naked, Dalish stops her.

“No, no, don’t bother, just-” She steers Skinner’s hand down to her belt instead. “And keep doing what you’re doing.”

“No tits?”

“It has never done much for me.”

It would do a lot for Skinner, but whatever. She’s getting urgent, too.

Unbuckling Dalish’s belt, bunching her tunic out of the way and lacing up the front of her trousers takes a couple of annoying minutes. Dalish tries to help but Skinner swats her away.

“ _I’m_ doing this,” she growls, lips brushing against her ear, and Dalish shivers. Skinner grins. “Do you like that? Do you like me in command?”

“Not if you’re going to be smug about it!”

With the silky skin of Dalish’s lower belly finally bared to her palm, Skinner doesn’t feel smug. She feels victorious, elevated. As she crosses the last couple inches to where her fingertips meets wispy tufts of hair, she holds her breath, and when she cups her hand over her mound and slips a finger in between her labia she revels in the wetness she finds there. Dalish is practically dripping.

“Damn,” she whispers. She’s rarely felt so accomplished, and they’re not even done.

“Skinner,” Dalish whines, rolling her hips. 

So Skinner snaps out of her reverie, gets two fingers good and wet with Dalish’s juices and finds her clit, already protruding hard and insistent. She begins rubbing gentle circles around it, but Dalish squirms in the wrong way.

“Not like- Wait.”

Her hand comes to join Skinner’s and show her how she wants it done: don’t rub, but tap… no, not like that, like _this_.

Skinner frowns, trying out the motion. Not like it’s difficult, but it’s going to be murder on her fingers. Dalish moans.

“Oh, that’s good.”

“Really? Your clit is weird.”

“Don’t criticize my clitoris. I don’t need your… clitique.”

Dalish’s giggle at her own horrible pun is cut short by a gasp when Skinner pulls her head back, fists her other hand in her hair and latches her mouth onto Dalish’s exposed neck to suck her mark into her skin.

“Shut up and I’ll give it to you how you like it.”

Then, they don’t talk.

It isn’t silence, not with Dalish moaning and mangling elven phrases together with common tongue in fragmented, gasping sentences, the volume of it steadily mounting along with her pleasure. Skinner kisses her often and hard, tries to swallow up some of the noise. She doesn’t want too much of it slipping out of the closet and alert the others. This, Dalish trembling in her arms, she wants to keep as her own for just a little longer.

Her fingers are aching. Dalish is so slick to the touch, responds so readily to the slightest increase of the pace. She can’t help that she draws it out, stills her hand when Dalish’s panting reaches a certain pitch and waits for her to settle before she resumes. She needs to make it good. Dalish needs to get it good, deserves it.

Her own clit is throbbing, her vulva a pressing, swollen weight between her legs. So engorged it almost hurts - she’ll take care of herself later, but grinds against Dalish’s thigh to take the edge off. Dalish is clutching at her shoulders and that really does hurt, nails digging in. Skinner doesn’t let her know. She lets Dalish cling with all her strength while Skinner, little by little, takes her apart.

She’s so tense now. Drawn so taut. She’s arching off the crumpled sheets, straining for the orgasm. Her breath comes open-mouthed and hot. Beyond words, her moans are high and desperate and Skinner tries to picture the face she’s making, guess at whether her eyes are open or closed. She tastes tears running down Dalish’s temple and she flicks her fingers faster despite the pain.

“Come on,” Skinner whispers. “I got you, so come on.”

Pulling ferociously at her hair, taking her earlobe between her teeth and that’s when Dalish cries out and shatters.

“I love you,” she gasps, “I love you, Skinner, I love you, I love-” and it’s too soon, too little time for it to stand on and this moment is treacherous as quicksand but Skinner, her fingers wet and aching, she eats it all up and spits it right back.

\--

In the morning she stumbles out of the linen closet and she can tell what the others are thinking.

Skinner grins.

“Oh, yeah.”

When they cheer for her, she joins in.


End file.
